Season 8 Fics

into the dark

When Gendry wakes up, Arya is beside him.

"You're alive." She sounds disinterested, but he knows it isn't true. He's got the feeling she's been sitting there for a while. "No thanks to you."

Gendry groans, tries to sit up, and falls back. Arya doesn't make a move to help him, so he stays lying down. "You distracted me."

She had, sort of. Apparently, the kill order on his head still stood, so the gold cloaks were making it their mission to surround him on the battlefield, and the moment that he thought that he was done for, Arya had come out of no where, vaulting over their heads and landing right beside him. He had made her another one of those staff things that she liked, and it didn't take her very long to cut down a few of the men, and Gendry was just thinking how equally amazing and embarrassing it was for her to have to come save him when he got stabbed in the leg.

(They stabbed him in the leg, my father, she had said once. She had been so small, then, her eyes so haunted. She's still small, but her eyes don't say anything at all. The Goldcloaks. He was fighting the Kingslayer and then they pinned him to the street with a sword through the leg. That's why he got executed. Becuase they cheated.)

"Right." She doesn't seem amused. She hadn't laughed then, either. He doesn't think she stopped fighting- he vividly remembers her standing over him, dagger in one hand and staff in the other, that one glance she shot down his way before launching into the fight, bodies falling around him as people tried their luck against the Lady of Winterfell. "My fault."

She's angry at him.

She's always so angry at him.

He just wishes for once he would know what for.

"You don't belong on the battlefield." She was still holding the staff. He doesn't know why. No one's likely to attack him now that they've won. "You aren't a killer."

"I've killed people." It was stupid, to be offended over this. He has so many other things to take offense about. "You've watched me."

"You're a soldier." She raises an eyebrow at him. "I said you weren't a killer."

"And you?" He tries to sit up again, and this time he manages it. "You're a killer? Big, bad, Arya, hero of Winterfell?"

She stares at him, and he feels stupid. He knows that she' s a killer. Knows about servants coming in to find a room full of Frey's sprawled across the stone floor. Knows she killed the Knight King. Knows about Littlefinger, and her stupid list.

"I'm a lord," He says finally, when the silence gets too much. "Lords don't hide."

"Some do."

"Not me." He didn't want to talk about this. "I want to be a good one."

"You will be."

"Yeah?" He shouldn't say it, but he's angry, and in pain, and still has a spear through his leg, and he's got a vague memory of her screaming as she killed that very last Goldcloak that had cornered them in the alley and then dropping to her knees beside him and begging someone to please, please, please, I'll give any life but his, just don't let him die and he is still so certain hat she loves him. "Then why won't you marry me?"

It makes her flinch, and she drops his hand. It breaks the skin of his knuckles when it lands on the cement, and it is only that moment that Gendry knew she was holding it.

"I told you." He's hurt her. He didn't mean to hurt her. "I'm no lady."

Gendry snorts. "I know for a fact that that's not true."

"That's not," She makes a face at him. "I can't run a castle. I don't want people to look at me, let alone, call me my lady, I don't want to be anyone's lady."

"Not even mine?"

"The things I've done- ladies don't do that. I won't just sit there in a pretty dress and let you make all the decisions, and I won't let you go off to war and leave me behind. I'm a killer." Her hands are shaking. They're still covered in his blood. "That's what I learned to be. Not," She swallows, hard. "Not whatever you want."

"But you kissed me, before." This seems important. He's not sure why. She thought she was going to die. Things look different in the morning. "I thought you liked me. I knew I liked you."

She glares at him. "You were a bastard, then."

It throws him. "So?"

"So I didn't have to be a lady. You were just a bastard. Just Gendry. And I was just Arya. Now we're-," She swallows, and her gaze skitters over the street, towards the rest of the dying men. He wonders if he's dying. If that's why he's doing this. "Lord Baratheon and Lady Stark. And that means something else."

"What's it mean?"

"That I can't just do things because I want to do them, if I marry you. And I can't finish my list."

"Is that so bad?" She had wanted him, before, but they all have things they want. "To not be a killer?"

"That's the only thing I ever knew how to be."

Gendry ignores this, mostly because he's not sure that she's wrong. She had always been so much braver than him, so much more ready to go for the throat.

"I loved you then, too. When I left. And I left because I was a bastard, and I asked you to marry me, because I thought I was worthy then." His leg wasn't aching so much. He wonders if she snuck him milk of the poppy or if he was just dying. "I've loved you, every version of you."

"I always thought you were worthy." She was crying. He might be dying. He doesn't want to ask. "You're the one who couldn't see that. And I love you, but I can't be your lady."

"Then don't be my lady. Just be," His tongue felt heavy in his mouth. He was tired. "Just be mine. Okay? Just be mine."

He's dying.

Probably.

That's why she agrees.

But also- maybe not. maybe he'll live.

He hopes he'll live.

"Okay," She says, and he's pretty sure it means he's dying if she agrees, but then, she does love him. She does want him. Just not the Lord version of him. Which is a bit problematic, since he had always thought it was the only way he could have her. "I'll be yours."